Women’s Pay Level in Gov. Romney’s Staff

ByWSJ Staff

By Mark Maremont and Tom McGinty

Two of the 10 highest-paid members of Mitt Romney’s gubernatorial staff were women in 2003, his first year as Massachusetts governor, and on average full-time women staffers earned 25% less than male staffers that year, according to data from the Massachusetts Comptroller’s office. (See tables.)

A main reason for the low average for women was that 60% of the lowest-paid full-time staff in 2003 – those earning $25,000 a year or less — were female.

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By the last year of Mr. Romney’s tenure as governor, 2006, four of the 10 highest-paid staffers were women, and 82% of the lowest-paid full-time staff were, the data show. Female staffers that year earned, on average, 29% less than their male counterparts.

Employment of women during Mr. Romney’s gubernatorial tenure became a hot issue after Tuesday night’s debate, when Mr. Romney answered a question about equal pay issues by citing his efforts to hire women in state government. Mr. Romney’s comment that he received “binders full of women” as part of that effort has been used as a rallying point for the campaign of President Barack Obama, as it tries to woo female voters.

A Romney campaign spokeswoman responded to a request for comment by sending a list of articles critical of Mr. Obama’s record of employing women. The first one she cited said that women employed in the Obama White House made an average of 18% less than men.

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The salary information covers only the staff in Mr. Romney’s office, not in state government. A study by the University of Massachusetts Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy showed that 42% of Mr. Romney’s senior-level appointments were women during his first two years in office, and that percentage dropped to 25% in his final two years.

A 2004 study by the State University of New York at Albany, cited by Mr. Romney at the debate, found that Massachusetts ranked highest in the nation for the percentage of women appointed to top policy leadership positions.

The highest-paid woman staffer throughout Mr. Romney’s Massachusetts tenure was Cynthia Gillespie, the governor’s chief policy adviser, who now works for a Washington law firm. Her pay, which started at $150,000 in 2003, each year was the same as the top-paid male staffer, Eric Fehrnstrom, currently a top aide to the Romney campaign.

Of the 30 staffers making more than $75,000 a year in 2003, 13 were women. By 2006, there were 20 staffers making more than $75,000, of whom six were women.

At the low end, there were 25 staffers in 2003 who made $12.82 an hour or less, the equivalent of less than $25,000, of whom 15 were women. Most were classified as “staff assistant.”

Mr. Romney, meanwhile, is listed as getting paid zero for the first three years of his tenure, and not even listed in 2006. His title, though, took a jump. For 2003 he was listed as “staff assistant,” but that was then corrected in later years to “Governor of the Commonwealth.”

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